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A Point About Grammar
40hz:
I like sentences that leave you unable to determine exactly what is being asked because text is unable to convey the voice inflection that would make its meaning clear to anyone. Example: this topic was recently posted in the forum:
A plea for help from a VS developer...
Is this a VS developer who is asking for help - or - is it someone attempting to solicit help from a VS developer?
(It was the second BTW :) )
Benny Hill used to base a great of his comedy routines on wordplay that took advantage of pauses and inflection.
My favorite was this classic sentence found on a telegram:
NOT GETTING ANY BETTER COME HOME SOON. STOP.
Should it be read as:
Not getting any better. Come home soon! :(
-or-
Not getting any. Better come home soon! :P
Love it! ;D
timns:
@mwb1100: I enjoyed that!
I do actually agree with you about 'alright' - I find myself using it too and it's a hair's breadth away from being acceptable - which is my excuse whenever I type it ;)
For some reason I don't mind 'blog' - but I do know what you mean about some words or phrases being teeth-gratingly annoying. For instance, I hate to hear people say they "clicked through" a hyperlink.
40hz:
Parallelism is difficult to teach because there are many cases where making something grammatically (i.e. correctly) parallel leads to awkward sentence construction. When that happens, it's usually best to split the original statement into two separate sentences to avoid a weird sounding albeit grammatically correct sentence.
My dog Buster likes to chase a ball. He poops in the woods.
Alternatively, the widely misunderstood and (IMO) underused semicolon can be employed:
My dog Buster likes to chase a ball; and poop in the woods.
@CUW: In your example, wouldn't 'poops' be a verb within the context of the sentence. Unless, of course, your dog chases poops (as in the...um...object?) while in the woods. Can't imagine that being much of a challenge for him however. From my experience, poops don't run around all that much. And thank goodness for it!
;D
cranioscopical:
I hate to hear people say they "clicked through" a hyperlink.
-timns (March 03, 2011, 01:34 PM)
--- End quote ---
People seem to be "ticking boxes" quite a bit these days.
In the world as it is today, I like to avoid all kinds of ticking boxes.
40hz:
I hate to hear people say they "clicked through" a hyperlink.
-timns (March 03, 2011, 01:34 PM)
--- End quote ---
People seem to be "ticking boxes" quite a bit these days.
In the world as it is today, I like to avoid all kinds of ticking boxes.
-cranioscopical (March 03, 2011, 02:48 PM)
--- End quote ---
Why is that? They're quite the bomb.
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